Tag Archives: Lacan

Features

Subjectivity at the Intersection of Metaphoric and Metonymic Functions

By
This article is part of the series:

I have been intending to return and continue the two lines of discussion I had started earlier concerning the broader theme of political subjectivity and the more specific issue of metonymic and metaphoric functions for a while now, but too many things stopped me from doing so.  Thankfully a recent comment/question by Malte about my earlier posting on metaphor and …

Features

Political Subjectivity / Subjectivity beyond the Subject

By
This article is part of the series:

I have come across an interesting talk by Caroline Williams which would be of interest and relevance to those following the topic of subjectivity, and political subjectivity in specific.

Professor Williams teaches at the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, and her main focus is on political theory, and as you will hear in …

Features

The Hegelian Subject: Negativity and the Desire for Desire

By
This article is part of the series:

As I mentioned in the last note, the two notions of negativity and linguistic structure provide the basic context for discussing political subjectivity. Sara’s reflection on the notion of negativity was certainly welcome, given that I think that is really what sets Lacan’s work apart from so much of what is on the market as psychoanalytic theory. I would …

Features

The (Lacanian) unconscious: structure and negative ontology

By
This article is part of the series:

As I pointed out in the last post, Lacan’s successful juxtaposition of a psychoanalytic model of the subject with (post)structuralist approaches to meaning and linguistic organization has contributed immensely to the contemporary understanding of the subjective as political. At the same time, however, a significant aspect of Lacan’s ‘structural’ conception of the subject which has fundamental relevance to our …

Features

The Unconscious: Metaphor and Metonymy

By
This article is part of the series:

In his 1930s text, ‘the structure of the unconscious,’ Freud described the unconscious as “a fact without parallel, which defies all explanation or description.” Construed through this very mystifying, if not metaphysical, perspective, the unconscious then remained to be the single most unknowable and more or less untheorizable element of all observable features of human psychology, and of the psychoanalytic …